


Not A Hero

by RichardGraysonPercyJackson



Series: The Forbidden Love of Nightwing and Deathstroke [30]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Beating, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mugging, Protective Slade Wilson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 20:15:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18453851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RichardGraysonPercyJackson/pseuds/RichardGraysonPercyJackson
Summary: Slade is a mercenary and has never tried or pretended to be anything other than that.Dick loves him for that, especially after he's brutally beaten on the night of his first wedding anniversary with Slade.





	Not A Hero

“Give me all your money!”

Dick slowly lifted his hands, far too aware of the gun against his back.

“Okay,” he said quietly. “Let’s just take it easy.”

“Ralph, search him.”

Dick heaved a sigh, closing his eyes as he felt hands roaming over his torso and legs. It soon became apparent, however, that it was less about searching him for his phone and wallet and more about feeling him up.

“If you don’t mind,” he murmured. “My phone is in my jacket pocket and my wallet’s in my back pocket.”

“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” the first mugger snarled. 

“Because it’s my anniversary,” Dick replied. “And I’d like to get home to my husband.”

There was silence for a moment. “Fuck,” the one Dick assumed was Ralph hissed. “You’re a fucking gay?”

Dick had half a second to register the click of a gun before a bullet was tearing through his thigh, sending him to the ground with a scream.

“Boys.”

He looked up through blurry, pained vision to find five men towering over him, baseball bats and brass knuckles in hand.

“Let’s teach him a lesson.”

 

………

 

Dick wasn’t sure how long they stood there beating him, but by the time they finished and backed off, there wasn’t an inch of him that  _ didn’t _ hurt. He wasn’t sure when he started crying, but he was sobbing now. It had already been a long week and he was tired. His emotions were getting the best of him.

Rain was coming down hard and through his blurry vision, he could see trail of crimson blood flowing down the alley away from him.

“I hope you die!” the first man spat, kicking Dick in the stomach as hard as he could before he and his friends stormed off.

As soon as they were gone, Dick gave up on controlling himself. On staying silent. As soon as they were gone, he let out an ear splitting scream of pain which quickly crumbled into painful, heaving sobs.

He began to hyperventilate and with no one around to help him calm down, Dick ended up losing consciousness and passing out. 

When he came to, the rain had stopped but he was still curled in a ball of agony. His hands were trembling, both broken since the muggers had stepped on them and broken every bone.

He let out a pained sob as he reached for his phone which lay cracked a broken a little ways away, but still within his reach.

It took a long time to get past the fire racing through his hands before he was finally able to pull the phone closer. His bottom lip wobbled as he painstakingly dialed Slade’s number.

“You’re late, little bird. It’s only been a year. Cheating on me already?”

Dick let out a sob of relief at his husband’s voice. Instantly, he heard the sound of a chair being shoved back.

“Richard?” Slade sounded worried. “What’s wrong?”

“Can-can you come get me?” Dick whimpered. “I don’t...I-I don’t think i could move.”

“Where are you?” Slade asked and Dick could hear him moving frantically around the apartment.

“I don’t know!” Dick sobbed, breaking down into tears all over again.

“Alright, alright,” Slade said in his low, gentle voice that always helped Dick calm down after nightmares and a rough patrol. “You’re alright.”

“I think my hands are broken,” Dick whimpered. “They hurt.”

“Stay on the phone, pretty bird,” Slade murmured. “I’m tracking you that way.”

“I just wanna go home,” Dick said softly, voice breaking as he began to cry again.

 

………..

 

Dick thought he didn’t have anymore tears to shed.

He was wrong, because as soon as he saw Slade approaching him, he began to cry all over again.

“Shh, pretty bird,” Slade whispered as he rushed to kneel in front of Dick. “You’re okay. What happened?”

“Muggers,” Dick mumbled, breath catching in ihs throat as Slade carefully lifted him up to cradle hm against the mercenary's chest. 

“You still have your wallet and phone,” Slade told him, cautiously standing and carry Dick out of the alley, adjusting the acrobat so Dick’s face was pressed into his chest, protecting his eyes from the bright city lights.

“They beat me up cause I said I had to get home to my husband.”

Slade barely resisted the urge to tighten his grip on Dick. “Should have told them to talk to me,” he said gruffly, a growl in his words. “I would have set them straight.”

“You would have ripped their throats out,” Dick said, voice hoarse from crying and screaming. When he noted they had stepped inside, he looked around to find Slade entering the elevator of their apartment building.

“You would have let me,” Slade reminded him. “Who were they?”

“I don’t know,” Dick replied, closing his aching eyes and pressing his face to Slade’s neck again. “There was a Ralph.”

“There was a Ralph,” Slade repeated fondly. “Very well. I can work with that.”

 

………..

 

It took several hours to properly bind his hands and bandage almost every inch of Dick’s body and edspite how gentle Slade was trying to be, Dick couldn’t help but cry out in pain more than once.

With the help of the drugs Slade not so subtly slipped into the tea he made Dick drink, the acrobat managed to drift into a mostly painless sleep.

When he woke up and moved to the couch with Slade’s help, he turned on the news and was instantly confronted with the news that five corpses - which Dick would bet anything were the men who had assaulted him - had turned up in Bludhaven bay, brutally beaten and dismembered.

“Slade,” Dick said quietly from where he was lying across the couch with his head in Slade’s lap, the mercenary’s hand combing through his hair.

“Hmm?” Slade replied, reading quietly.

“Did you kill them?”

Slade flicked his eyes up to the TV, watching the news long enough to understand what Dick was referencing.

“Yes, I did,” Slade replied.

Dick swallowed thickly before speaking in a whisper. “Good.”


End file.
